Anything worth doing is worth doing well. – English proverb
I’m often kidded for eschewing “smart phones”, driving decades-old cars, and the like; though I’m not averse to new technology, neither am I involved in the typical mad dash to embrace it simply because it is new. I tend to react to new ways of doing things with the same skepticism I apply to everything else: I ask, is there really anything wrong with the way I’m doing it now? Does this new approach somehow substantially improve upon it? Does it save time, cost less, give better results, etc? Is the new solution actually inferior to the old in any way? And if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, does the degree of improvement justify whatever trouble or expense is involved in the switch itself? Sometimes, my decision is in favor of change, which is why I embraced Twitter, now make extensive use of embedded video and bought my DVD burner when they were still rather pricey. But other times I conclude that there is insufficient reason for change, or even that the “new and improved” method is anything but; this is why I still make popcorn the old-fashioned way.
My younger readers may not remember a time when popcorn was made in a pot rather than a microwave oven, but this innovation was actually fairly recent (dating to 1989). Since I had already perfected my popping technique about 5 years before that I was, as you might expect, in no great rush to try out this “improvement” (especially since I didn’t even own a microwave oven until 1991). I can’t tell you exactly when I first tried it, but I suspect it was when someone made a bag in the library break room; I can, however, tell you that I was wholly unimpressed with it. Though it smelled just as delicious as regular popcorn, it suffered from the same problem as air-popped corn: the absence of oil in the popping process resulted in dry flakes to which salt would not adhere, thus producing a product roughly as appetizing as Styrofoam. And though the industry rapidly solved that problem with artificial butter and flavor coatings, the last batch I tasted (perhaps three years ago) was still noticeably inferior to proper popcorn, and the plethora of unpopped kernels invariably left behind offend my Scottishness. Furthermore, I’ve always been at a loss to understand why anybody with access to a stove would bother with it; microwave popcorn takes just as long to prepare, and it’s dramatically more expensive.
But a couple of weeks ago, I saw news of concerns that the chemical diacetyl, which is used in microwave popcorn’s butter flavoring, could be much more toxic than previously believed, and though I’m not one to encourage food panics I thought that those readers who are concerned, or who just want to eat real popcorn at home again, might appreciate Maggie’s very own method of preparing perfect popcorn.
What You’ll Need
First, get a bag of cheap popping corn from the grocery store. Don’t waste your money on “gourmet” popping corn; once you get the hang of it you’ll find that even the cheapest generic corn produces exactly the same big, fluffy flakes with very few unpopped kernels. Next, the oil: I usually use a mixture of vegetable oil and bacon grease, but I honestly think you can use soybean oil, rapeseed (canola) oil or whatever other liquid oil (not shortening or butter) you have handy without materially altering the results. You’ll also need butter or margarine; modern “spreads” which are less than 50% fat actually work best, but if you want to use butter or high-fat margarine I’ll tell you how below. You’ll also need a standard-sized brown paper grocery bag, and table salt plus whatever other seasonings you fancy (you can even use seasoned salt or a spice mixture).
The pot is the most critical component of the process. Choose a light two-quart saucepan; I find aluminum works best, but a thin-walled steel pot should do just as well. Do not use a heavy iron or steel pot; it will heat too slowly for this purpose, and its weight will make the vigorous shaking necessary for popping too difficult (and probably damage your burner in the process). Repeated use over high heat will destroy Teflon, so you might select an old pot whose coating has fallen apart. The lid should fit snugly, but not lock on; a too-loose lid may come off while you’re shaking the pot, but a locked one will not allow room for expansion. Once you find a pot that works perfectly, hold onto it; I’ve been using the same one for about 25 years.
The Method
1) Place the pot on the largest available burner and add 3 tablespoons (45 ml) of oil; measure out 1/3 cup (80 ml) of popping corn, open the paper bag and place it nearby on the counter or floor. Finally, place the pot lid upside down within reach, and put a heaping tablespoon (roughly 20 ml) of margarine in it; if using butter or full-fat margarine use half as much and put a scant tablespoon of water (about 10 ml) in the lid as well.
2) Turn the burner to high heat, and pick up one popcorn kernel. When the oil starts to smoke, throw the kernel into it and wait. When it pops, add the rest of the popping corn and then turn the lid over onto the pot; the margarine or butter and water will fall into the hissing oil when you do so. If the oil starts to smoke a lot more before the test kernel pops, proceed as if it had popped because you may have inadvertently chosen a bad kernel. Proper oil temperature is very important; the water (or water component of the margarine) helps to moderate it so most of the corn reaches popping temperature at the same time (rather than over a long stretch of time as microwave popcorn does).
3) As soon as the lid is on, start shaking the pot vigorously back and forth; the idea is to heat the kernels evenly and keep the popped corn from sticking to the pot. You don’t need to look like you’re trying to erode the burner with friction, but don’t be too prissy with it either. After a little while (roughly a minute, maybe less) you’ll start to hear popping; if you’ve done everything right it will all pop pretty quickly after that point, and you may find the popped corn actually lifts the lid off of the pot! Don’t worry if that happens; it means you’ve done everything perfectly.
4) Once the popping slows down turn off the heat, but keep shaking the pot until the popping stops; then, dump the popcorn into the brown paper bag. If you’re making more than one batch, do so; you want to be finished popping before moving on to the next step. A standard paper bag can comfortably fit two batches, but you can make it work for three.
5) Salt the popcorn, then roll the top of the bag down some and hold it tightly. Shake the bag to distribute the salt, turning it upside down and sideways to get good coverage. Taste the popcorn, repeating the salting and shaking process if necessary, then add whatever other spices you like and shake again. If you’re using seasoned salt, this is all one step. Once you’re satisfied, cut the top off of the bag and serve the popcorn from the bottom half.
6) Don’t be discouraged if it isn’t perfect the first time; popping corn is so incredibly cheap you can try again without much waste. The most common problems result from oil temperature: if the popcorn burns you need to shake more or use more water/margarine, but if the corn pops slowly or the finished flakes are small, hard and not puffy, it means you used too much water or margarine. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment with flavors; we like to use Tony Chachere’s or pepper and garlic, but I use all sorts of different things (even grated parmesan cheese). Enjoy!
“The most common problems result from oil temperature…”
…and inadvertently setting the kitchen on fire, because we only know how to cook with the microwave!
A great topic for me, Maggie. I’m on a low-sodium diet, and can’t eat microwave popcorn anymore. I’ve done the stovetop method, and getting to the point where I’m not burning half the kernels 😀
I’m old enough to remember pre-microwave popcorn. My Dad had an actually popcorn making machine that I wish I had right now.
You can use one of those salt-free spice mixtures, and I’ve heard that they also sell potassium chloride as a salt substitute. 🙂
You can also get salt-free microwave popcorn. Just saying.
A bit off-topic, but what’s with measuring butter in tablespoons? I see a lot of American recipes doing it, and while I understand you cook by volume, if I’m cooking with butter I’m cooking with butter I just got out of the fridge, therefore I’m cooking with butter that’s too hard to portion by tablespoon – and I imagine I’m not the only one doing that.
Most American butter marks the tablespoons on the side of the paper wrapper of each stick. I think the method dates to the days before refrigeration, when butter kept in a warm kitchen would be semi-soft and therefore measurable in spoons as one can still measure shortening.
You know, I’d have never thought there’s a natural number of tablespoons in a butter stick had you not mentioned the marks, since I usually converted everything to grams to help me figure how much of a 200g packet of butter I need. But splitting a stick of butter in 8 is easily eyeballable and so’s getting a stick of butter out of a 200g packet, so thanks for helping me figure out one of the most annoyingly-uneyeballable bits of cooking!
My pleasure. 🙂
Goddam, I got so hungry reading this and my mouth watered up too!
It’s been years since I’ve eaten popcorn (too many wasteful carbs) … well strike that, when I go to the movies I’ll have a small bag because I like movie popcorn and they use coconut oil to pop it. It was the coconut oil that got movie popcorn labeled “the worst food on the planet” decades ago. However, now we know how good coconut oil is for you.
Anyway – movie popcorn and popcorn cooked in a pot are my two favorite popcorns. Everything else is pretty much “fake” shit to me. Both movie and pot popped popcorn have a unique taste. I can’t describe the taste of the pot-popped, but I can definitely tell when the popcorn’s been popped in a pot!
Now – there’s another way that I never learned – and that is “fireplace popped popcorn”. I remember seeing the contraption you used to pop popcorn in a fireplace when I was a kid – but never knew anyone who actually did it. In the DEEP south, not that many people have fireplaces. I grew up in a house that did – and the fireplace was used mostly as a habitat for the local birds – we never really used it for fire.
Warning – stay away from BALLPARK POPPED POPCORN. Yeah, I did a stint (for charity) in a concession stand at New Orleans Zephyr field before Hurricane Katrina – and learnt to stay away from that stuff. We got that shit in big plastic BAGS already popped and just heated it up. And any bags we didn’t use we saved for the next ballgame – usually a week or so away.
I hate to see you disrespecting on smart phones though. My Iphone … keeps track of all my flights when I’m travelling and immediately notifies me of last minute gate changes – and that saves me a lot of time running around in the blind. If I have a short transfer – I can get the terminal maps when I’m still in the plane and figure out how I’m going to O.J. Simpson my way to the next gate. Facetime – try that in the Arctic! It’s awesome when you have a good internet connection (though last time my connection was provided by a damned Swedish Space Corporation and was absolute crap!) Smart phones are awesome if you move around a lot – which I do.
I have nothing against smart phones, and I think it’s great that so many people have them to record cops with. I just have no use for them in my life; my 2008 model flip-phone works just fine.
By the way – the one thing my iPhone doesn’t do is protect me from TSA stupidity. Well, not really TSA since this was in Europe (Amsterdam) … but …
Increasingly, you have to climb up a higher and higher wall when returning to the states via Europe. It would appear that the Europeans believe that America is a terror target – and they don’t want the next one to come from a plane that launched on their soil.
AT THE BOARDING GATE – I, and every single passenger boarding the plane for the US, was subjected to a 15 to 30 minute antagonistic interview. To accomplish this – they set up eight interviewers from airport security and began “boarding” the flight two hours early. I say “board” – but passing the gauntlet of security merely got you INSIDE the gate – where you were subject to further “random” security checks by roving goons. I had a bottle of water taken from me – AT THE GATE. Usually you’re fine if you buy a liquid inside the departure terminal after you’ve gone through security – not here! All my stuff was RE-Xrayed – and I had to go through the nude body scanner (not a big deal for me and maybe one day a hot strip-scanner operator will throw herself at me! Well, one can fantasize no?). Any way – after the strip-scan, I was then hustled for a full body pat-down. What the fuck? I thought the strip scanner was the ultimate authority on everything from dicksize to the presence of weapons! Not any more I guess. I tried to make an appeal for a female “frisker” so that it would feel like less of a violation to my person – but I was summarily denied and some bearded Dutch dude with hairy arms and thick fingers began exploring my nether regions for weapons!
I joke about this – but seriously, were anyone to be “teleported” from 1975 up to the present and placed in line to return to the US via airplane – he would think that suddenly the U.S. had become Nazi Germany. A bunch of old folks laughed at me when I complained to them about the security procedures saying … “Oh I feel so much safer when then they do that though!!”
LOL
As does mine (2008 flip phone). I definitely get some funny looks from the graduate students I occasionally work next to on my contracts, who come largely from upper-middle class families. The notion of using something until it breaks or a plainly superior model comes along is completely alien to them. They think I’m being retro. 😛
When I was growing up in MT, we essentially heated our house in the winter with a wood stove in the basement. Did an amazing job, really, heated a two story, four bedroom house quite well. Anyway, during the winter we used to cook popcorn with it as well. We had and used a device that looked like two long handled wire baskets joined with a hinge. Worked great, but had a learning curve. Without the oil, didn’t salt up as well as Maggies method though. I bet my my folks still have it somewhere…
Yeah – that’s the device but I couldn’t remember if the bottom of it was solid and could hold oil. I guess waving a pot of oil over open flames is a bit like asking for trouble though.
My mother went back to making popcorn in a pot about six years ago. We also bought a stovetop popcorn popper, which is great because it has a container for the butter that dispenses it at the correct time and a handle on the side so you can turn the popcorn as it pops. It makes A LOT of popcorn too. And this is a great way to make homemade kettle corn, which I love.
“Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”
And, therefore, anything not worth doing well isn’t worth doing.
The popcorn I get at the movies is better than the popcorn I get out of my microwave, even when I buy a good brand. But it isn’t enough better to worth the hassle.
I am a single man living alone. I only go all out with food when I’m cooking for somebody* or when I’m trying out something that I may cook for somebody. I eat a lot beans and rice, a lot of hot pockets, and more ramen noodles than are probably good for me. Oh, and Wolf brand chili (no beans, God knows I’m already eating enough beans) with cheese and salsa, eaten with tortilla chips. Now that’s good stuff.
Back in the day, I almost always burned the popcorn on top of the stove. My placed smelled of burned popcorn for days. I suppose that, if I did it a couple of times a week, every week, for many many weeks on end, I would eventually get better at it. But in the meantime I’d waste a lot of popcorn, a lot of oil, probably ruin a pan or two, and inevitably I would forget, probably more than once, to take the batteries out of my smoke detector and have my head split by that noise. And the smell would last for months. All to get to the point where I could do all this measuring and shaking and shaking again, to provide myself with popcorn which is better than I get out of a microwave, but not enough better to make it worth the extra hassle.
* A few months back, Tracy started dropping subtle hints that she’s like my to make the game hens again. Real subtle, like, “When are you going to make the game hens again?”
We had a deep fryer that was gift to my parents from my grandparents; they bought it in the 1930’s and my mom was still using it in the 1990’s. We made popcorn, deep fried scones, and donuts in it. Far better than what you got at the movie theatres (for the popcorn).
New Year’s Eve we had a tradition of scones and potato soup for supper and donuts for dessert.
We have a similar recipe, but it’s for ‘spicy popcorn’.
Pour oil into a pan, shake 6-10 shakes of original Tobasco into the oil, swirl it around, add the popcorn, put the lid on.
After the popcorn pops, dump it into a paper bag, add salt, parmesan cheese, and butter. Shake like crazy.
Delicious.